Piano

Hopefully Isla will follow in my footsteps and play the piano someday. I think this video shows that she is on her way!

Bouncy House

This video is from May when we went to a party with a bouncy house. It took her awhile to warm up to it but eventually she started bouncing!

July 2011

This was this last summer at the O'Sullivan's. She is getting so brave with the things she does at the park and on playground.

Easter 1 year old!

Isla got to wear an Easter hat this year! So cute!

Isla's 2nd birthday

My baby is 2! We had a wonderful birthday party for her with lots of ELMO! There was an Elmo cake, fruit pizza and we even played pin the nose on the Elmo! Many of Isla's friends and their parents joined us for a wonderful day.

Well, now that she is 2 lots of new things are happening! There are more terrible two moments but also lots of moments where she surprises us with new words and songs. She is getting good at saying most of the letters in the alphabet song and she still LOVES "Wheels on the Bus." She can get herself in her car seat and color with crayons. This morning she told Mark "I love you" for the first time!

New Swing and New Phases!

I am very proud of myself as a mommy! I bought this swing at a garage sale for $1 (super thrifty as well!) and assembled it myself! Well, almost. My neighbor helped with the drill. So we had a surprise for daddy when he got back from his golf tournament! Isla loves the swing and I also put her slide in the backyard so we have a mini playground!

I am also SO proud of my big girl! We are only doing the pacifier for nap-time and nighttime! And she is doing GREAT! She surprises me all the time! I can already tell that she is self-soothing in other ways and talking more. Today she said "heavy" and "four"! She also said a sentence while I was skyping with my sister. "Emmit is puppy!" Not grammatically correct but it's a start!

Other new things are playing with her new "bike" and doing all sorts of big kid things at the playground. It freaks me out but she can climb pretty much with me just spotting her on the ladders to get to the top!

Along with these proud moments are the bad girl moments. She likes to hit us on the face when she is upset so we are doing time-outs now. Just for 2-3 minutes. So now we can say "stop hitting or a time-out" and she will usually stop. Otherwise, "time out!"

I read Parenting with love and logic. A wonderful book. So we try to offer choices as much as possible. And also say things like, "Mommy knows how it feels to do something she doesn't want to do like the dishes..." and other things like that.

Last for this update....my baby will be 2 in just a couple of weeks. How the time flies! I look at pictures of her from last year this time and she had almost no hair! Now she has a bunch! Enough to braid along the side and put in pig-tails! And she is counting to three! My little baby is officially a toddler!!!

Easter egg hunt

We did a very simplified version of the easter egg hunt this year. She loved it all the same and got very excited when she discovered a new egg. We let her eat some of the chocolate. She seemed to like it and didn't get sick!

pushups like daddy

You can hear her counting the push-ups. Sometimes she even gives a little grunt...just like daddy!

sunglasses with mommy

The other cute thing from this last week was that Mark learned how to put her hair in a ponytail! So sweet! I never thought I would see the day....

hair and make-up

We have a girlie girl on our hands. She loves her hair and make-up!